Structural components, such as those incorporated into aerospace or automotive vehicles, are commonly sandwich structures that have a pair of thin and rigid facesheet materials separated by a lightweight reinforcing core. The reinforcing core may include closed-cell materials, such as honeycomb, or open-cell materials, such as a microlattice structure. Conventional microlattice structures include a series of interconnected lattice members or struts arranged in periodic arrays, such as arrays of octahedral or hexahedral unit cells. Additionally, conventional microlattice structures also include a series of nodes formed at the intersections and points of convergence between the lattice struts.
The nodes of the struts are typically the weak points of the microlattice structure because stresses transmitted through the lattice struts are concentrated at the relatively small nodes (e.g., the stresses transmitted through several lattice struts are concentrated at a single node). Accordingly, mechanical failure at these nodes is likely to occur if the microlattice structure is subject to compressive loading exceeding a particular threshold. Thus, the overall compressive strength and stiffness of conventional microlattice structures, and the structural components into which the microlattice structures are incorporated, are limited by the failure point of the nodes.